SPOILER WARNING: This post will appear every Wednesday following a new episode of “Sons of Anarchy” (sorry it’s late this week). It is intended to be read after seeing the show’s latest installment as a source of recap and analysis. As such, all aspects and events that have occurred up to and including the episode discussed are fair game.

Opie Delivered

There’s really only one thing we need to talk about this week. Everything that happened outside the prison walls—Clay and Gemma’s drama, Tara and Gemma’s drama, Wendy and Gemma’s drama—it was filler. With the exception of the very last non-jail sequence, Nero’s place getting busted, it all felt like shit we’d seen it before. There’s no love lost between Clay and his (ex?) old-lady. Tara is now Gemma, and the new biker queen. Wendy wants to see her kid. Sure. Alright. Whatever.

Something real happened this week. Well, something “real” anyway. Opie, who’s always been both SAMCRO and the show’s moral center, is dead. Giving him that fuck yeah moment last episode should’ve been the hint. It was what Ope wanted. The guy chose to go to prison, ostensibly to help protect the other guys. But as I mentioned last week, how big of a difference could one guy really make when Pope owns everyone? Of course he’d have some prisoners, and if he’s got cops on the payroll then shit, why not some guards? Then we saw he’s even got the warden in his pocket. Four guys isn’t all that much better than three up against all those people and all that cash. Opie had a death wish. I just wish he could’ve taken Clay out with him.

Along with being the last bastion of righteousness, Opie has also been the club’s sacrificial lamb from day one. He spent five years in prison partly because he refused to turn on any of of the others involved in his failed arson. Nonetheless, his wife and father ended up dead at the hands of his “brothers.” It’s all ancient history. Point being: Opie never could catch a break.

As great as “Sons” is, one of its biggest issues has always been a refusal on the part of Kurt Sutter and the writers to actually kill a major character. Think about it. Although the full length of season four seemed to be leading up to Clay’s demise, even he is still breathing, labored though those breaths may be. Episode after episode, season after season, despite ludicrous odds, our favorite characters always managed to come out on top. As such, what’s stopped this show from being real, top tier television, is that at the end of the day, I never felt that fear. I was always certain that the main cast would survive.

All that changed with Opie’s death. It was just one of moments. Up until that final blow, I was still holding out hope he’d live to ride another day. You think it was tough to watch? I promise it hit Sutter a thousand times harder just to put those words on the page.

This episode was called “Laying Pipe,” and there’s more to that than “it was Colonel Mustard, I mean the Niners, in the prison, with the pipe.” Recall that “Sons of Anarchy” is based in part on “Hamlet.” Spoilers for the ending of Shakespeare’s version: everybody dies. Everybody. We can only expect some version of that moving forward, and this episode laid the foundation for everything that’s to come.

The war Jax had been trying so hard to avoid is in full swing. The new prez finally came to that realization when the light went out in his best friend’s eyes. Now, Jax is more alone than he’s ever been. Tig’s got to live with another death on his conscious, and sooner or later he’s going to recognize that like Opie, all his pain can be traced back to Clay. Tig might have been able to kill Clay, to succeed where Ope failed. Maybe. But Jax needs his step-dad alive, and as we saw at the end of this episode, Tig isn’t going to make the mistake of disobeying him. Was Jax’s promise to turn Tig over to Pope once things settled down genuine, or was it just more stalling to protect a friend? As for Clay, one can only hope that Opie’s death was Jax’s last straw, something will give with Romeo or the Irish, and he’ll finally kill Clay himself.

Things are really starting to heat up. “Sons of Anarchy” is intended for a seven-season run. And now that the big guns are out, it’s all downhill from here.

Check out the preview for next week’s episode of below and follow the writer on Twitter @NateKreichman.